I have always thought of tool making as the big difference between us humans and low animals. As I have looked at the situation over many years, I am not so sure that my original ideas were correct. That is the point of this blog.
It is true that only us humans make and use tools. There are a very few exceptions, but they are rare. At first, it appears that making tools is good and that there is nothing bad about it. It is good, but all is not good. Let's start out with Native Americans making arrow heads. It takes a lot of skill to make a good arrow head and for that reason those few who can make arrow heads are rewarded more. If you look at a group of Native Americans, the richest among he group would have been those few who could make arrow heads. With me so far?
Now, let's look at a tools invented by one of the Native Americans that allowed a person of modest skill to make very good arrow heads. The affect is to diminish the worth of the one person in the group who used to be able to make good arrow heads. The net affect is that persons who had very modes skills before could now produce some thing of value. That was good, but it lowered the worth of the person who used to make the arrow heads. Notice that there is both good and bad implications of this new "tool".
It is true that the tribe now had more arrow heads, but what if this process continued to its limit? In the limit, the people who were skilled enough to actually design and make the tools became more and more valuable and worthed more relative to those who used the tools. Think about this? Isn't it the purpose of tool designers to make tools that lower and lower skilled people can use? If that is the case the final impact is that the users of the tools value keeps going down while that of the tool maker goes up. Isn't this the same problem that we all face today with the spread between poor and wealthy rising?
It is actually getting worse. I recall when a machinist had to be very skilled, but today with the higher degree of computerisation, he only has to load and unload the machine. Even that is being eliminated with robots. If you look at the person who writes the program for the machine, they are becoming the very few who have the required skill while we have more and more low skilled people who can load and unload the machine.
The bottom line is that we have more good arrow heads, but the spread between the rich and poor keeps getting wider. Is this starting to sink in that this is not going to change, but is going to continue to get worse and worse? The challenge of the future for the human race is not going to be income or wealth, but the wider and wider distribution between the poor and rich. Remember that the median family net worth today is about $50,000 and that those in the top 1% is a thousand times this. It has never been this much difference in human history so there is no real basis for comparison. The only one that I can think of is between a King and his subjects. We don't have Kings here, but the comparison is real and it all began with "tool making". Isn't that interesting?
PS--The computer is just a new tool that the more skilled people can build and program them in such a way that they are easier and easier for lower skilled people to use. Isn't that exactly what has been happening? Look at your kids. They know how to punch the buttons, but very few have the skill to write programs. Do you now understand where this is all going? Computers are designed by a very few very skill people, but the people who actually build the computers often can't even read. Further, the kids who use these computers have even less skill. Look at the spread between the computer designers and the kids who push the buttons in terms of worth and wealth!
PS--The computer is just a new tool that the more skilled people can build and program them in such a way that they are easier and easier for lower skilled people to use. Isn't that exactly what has been happening? Look at your kids. They know how to punch the buttons, but very few have the skill to write programs. Do you now understand where this is all going? Computers are designed by a very few very skill people, but the people who actually build the computers often can't even read. Further, the kids who use these computers have even less skill. Look at the spread between the computer designers and the kids who push the buttons in terms of worth and wealth!
